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These are the first two books of Riordan's "Kane Chronicles" which is Riordan's take on modern kids and Egyptian mythology. Riordan relies heavily on what worked for the "Percy Jackson" books here, but not so much that he's copying himself.
Carter and Sadie Kane are siblings who only see each other two days a year because of a custody battle between their father and maternal grandparents after their mother's death. Carter travels the world with their archeologist father, and Sadie lives with their grandparents in England. Except, as it turns out, they're descended from pharaohs on both sides of the family tree, and are powerful magicians, which they learn after their father accidentally frees Set, gets possessed by Osiris, and then booted to the underworld in a magic coffin.
The narrative is split fairly equally between Carter and Sadie's POVs (Riordan formats this as the two making records and telling different parts of the story. I...think this doesn't work as well as it could because they both say things on the recording that I just can't see them saying in something that they expect a lot of people to eventually hear. Both voices are entertaining and distinctive enough, but both read a bit like Percy-lite.
As much as I like the Percy Jackson books and their mythology, I think I may like the integration a bit more here. In this series, the gods use humans as avatars, and so tend to be a bit more involved in the main action. (My favorite of the gods so far is Bast. Of course, she's also been around the most, so it's easier to get invested in her.) In addition, instead of the various teens having superpowers specific to godly parents, they have the ability to use magic and are able to choose what type of magic they'll learn. There's also considerably more racial diversity, and both leads are biracial (Sadie and Carter's father is black and their mother white, though Sadie looks exactly like a miniature version of their mother). So far, while we're told Carter is the Epic Destined Hero, the metaplot and action have revolved a lot more around Sadie. We'll see.
Incidentally, I suspect there are conversations in the underworld like this going on all the time:
( spoilers )
So, anyway, so far they're fun, though I wish the narrators sounded a bit less like Percy. My one real beef so far is that sometimes the books seem to be going "If only that darned Isis had left things (which is to say, powerful men) alone and not tried to have her own power and interfere with things!" It makes me want to imitate Bast and have my hair turn into a bristly poof.
Carter and Sadie Kane are siblings who only see each other two days a year because of a custody battle between their father and maternal grandparents after their mother's death. Carter travels the world with their archeologist father, and Sadie lives with their grandparents in England. Except, as it turns out, they're descended from pharaohs on both sides of the family tree, and are powerful magicians, which they learn after their father accidentally frees Set, gets possessed by Osiris, and then booted to the underworld in a magic coffin.
The narrative is split fairly equally between Carter and Sadie's POVs (Riordan formats this as the two making records and telling different parts of the story. I...think this doesn't work as well as it could because they both say things on the recording that I just can't see them saying in something that they expect a lot of people to eventually hear. Both voices are entertaining and distinctive enough, but both read a bit like Percy-lite.
As much as I like the Percy Jackson books and their mythology, I think I may like the integration a bit more here. In this series, the gods use humans as avatars, and so tend to be a bit more involved in the main action. (My favorite of the gods so far is Bast. Of course, she's also been around the most, so it's easier to get invested in her.) In addition, instead of the various teens having superpowers specific to godly parents, they have the ability to use magic and are able to choose what type of magic they'll learn. There's also considerably more racial diversity, and both leads are biracial (Sadie and Carter's father is black and their mother white, though Sadie looks exactly like a miniature version of their mother). So far, while we're told Carter is the Epic Destined Hero, the metaplot and action have revolved a lot more around Sadie. We'll see.
Incidentally, I suspect there are conversations in the underworld like this going on all the time:
( spoilers )
So, anyway, so far they're fun, though I wish the narrators sounded a bit less like Percy. My one real beef so far is that sometimes the books seem to be going "If only that darned Isis had left things (which is to say, powerful men) alone and not tried to have her own power and interfere with things!" It makes me want to imitate Bast and have my hair turn into a bristly poof.